Card idea: Fiery Heart (pro+for grants blood to pay cards)

I kind of like this card idea. If you are trying to do Protean combat, the blood cost is a problem. If you play Skin of Marble plus aggravated hands, you will lose at least two blood each time. The same if you play Skin of Steel plus aggravated hands.

Gangrel antitribu have access to the Path of the Feral Heart, but the Gangrel do not.

I agree that the fact that this is an action is tough for many decks, especially for combat-oriented decks. I also agree that letting large vampires get 6 free Freak Drives/Deflections/whatever is a bit much.

Maybe:

Name: Fiery Heart
Cardtype: Action / Combat
Discipline: Protean & Fortitude
[pro][for] +1 stealth action. Put this card on the acting vampire with 4 counters on it. This vampire can use these counters to pay some or all of the blood cost of cards he or she plays. Burn this card when it has no counters. A vampire may have only one Fiery Heart.
[PRO][FOR] Only usable before range is determined. Once this round, this vampire may reduce the cost of a combat card by 4 blood. A vampire can play only one Fiery Heart each round.

AaronC wrote:

Name: Fiery Heart
Cardtype: Action / Combat
Discipline: Protean & Fortitude
[pro][for] +1 stealth action. Put this card on the acting vampire with 4 counters on it. This vampire can use these counters to pay some or all of the blood cost of cards he or she plays. Burn this card when it has no counters. A vampire may have only one Fiery Heart.
[PRO][FOR] Only usable before range is determined. Once this round, this vampire may reduce the cost of a combat card by 4 blood. A vampire can play only one Fiery Heart each round.

Only one combat card? No sir! Make it so that the vampire may pay costs of cards during that combat from counters on this card. That seems more appropriate somehow. Or, how many combat cards that cost 4 blood do you even know, or see play for that matter?

Otherwise I really like the mechanic here. It's cool!

Krausedit\\ Oh, and make it that one one Fiery Heart is usable each combat so that it's not abused. It could even cost a blood on superior and still be playable...

Kraus wrote:

It could even cost a blood on superior and still be playable...

Well, it could also be weak. The superior would be usually about as strong as Inner Essence, which is not the most played card in the world.

In my humble opinion, blood management card like this one are usually ditched in combat deck because it is the least of your trouble, you already have too much to put in the deck.

If I were to do adjustement on the card, I would do an outferior as a hunt at +2 stealth or any other small advantage on protean, a :end: level that give 4 token usable as blood for the combat, and a :END: that rush and give the inferior effect.

(of course it's supposing it's supposed to help country gangrel in combat. If it's supposed to help pay non combat costly card, the original text is pretty fine)

(thanks AaronC)

Kraus wrote:

Only one combat card? No sir! Make it so that the vampire may pay costs of cards during that combat from counters on this card. That seems more appropriate somehow. Or, how many combat cards that cost 4 blood do you even know, or see play for that matter?

Otherwise I really like the mechanic here. It's cool!

Krausedit\\ Oh, and make it that one one Fiery Heart is usable each combat so that it's not abused. It could even cost a blood on superior and still be playable...

The philosophy behind my version is that the card be easily cyclable at superior. If the same vampire also had the basic version attached to himself, he could still use the counters on the basic version for multiple cards in combat. The superior version could be used for Body of Sun and Hidden Strength (or Burning Wrath, etc.) to good effect. I would prefer for the vampire to be able to use "my" superior on multiple cards, but I can't think of a clean way to do it without using counters, and the basic already uses counters.

Ohlmann: gestion = management

It smells more like a variation of Fatuus Mastery than Masochism.

seems to be aiming to try help Gangrel. Most of the cards which have high costs from Gangrel are the Animalism retainers, Protean Stealth and not much else really... It also means you can nearly always afford to take extra blood off with a Blood Doll/Vessel/MT/Villein because you've got a 'ghost 4 blood' to spend on cards (which will prevent the damage you're possibly going to be taking).


Gangrel and !Gangrel need help, usually in the oust. So we should look at either helping their traditional ousting methods (e.g. Gangrel's w/ , Ani Wall, Deep Song Bleed, Earth Melders, Form of Mist Bleed) or carefully choose one of their disciplines (or the clan as a whole) and give them a card to increase pressure on their prey.

Like many of the cards suggested in this forum the question is "what deck would I use this in?"

The answer, for me at least, is - none. Well, maybe you can come up with an obscure deck that would use it, but generally speaking, would this card see play?

You're using an action to create ghost blood that can then be used to pay for cards. I suppose the first card to be played after this will invariably be a Freak Drive because I cannot possibly imagine this being worth a minion's entire minion phase.

At this point it's not strictly superior to just Restoration+Freak Drive because that is a lot easier to play and gives actual blood that can be blood dolled off etc (even though it's only 2 blood instead of 3/5 after paying the Freak Drive). So the first change I'd like to see is make it give, like, 2/4 counters and include the untap or make it 4/4 and add the untap at superior to make it at least somewhat card efficient. And then... you still have to find useful ways to spend your blood.

Fatuus Mastery sees play because Chimestry is expensive and Ravnos using Fatuus Mastery tend to play Embraces and stuff too. Neither Protean nor Fortitude really have this problem. Other than Freak Drive fortitude is either free or makes you lose less blood than you would have otherwise. Protean can get costly if you really go out of you way with Stealth/Quick Meld/Claws combat but really... this card wouldn't make that awful variant of combat any less awful.